Between Now and Then
by codenamecynic
Summary: The things she tells herself aren't always true. She doesn't always win. Sometimes it still hurts. (Isabela reminisces on her complicated relationship with Hawke - Isabela/F!Hawke)


When Isabela closes her eyes, she is anything she wants to be.

Time and again she remakes herself, changing names, allegiances, alliances, appearances, spots to stripes and back again merely because she can. When Isabela sets foot on the Siren's Call for the first time, she is a woman without a past and the wind whipping past her ears sets her free.

She cuts her hair. _He_ used to like it, and so she swears she'll never wear it long again. It's good for a while, it works for her. She loses the roundness of youth, cheekbones and wit growing sharp.

But she misses it. The hair, not the – never mind. It's _her_ hair, she likes it, so she changes it back, letting it grow long, long, long as the blade of the dueling sword she carries on her hip, long as the string of notches on the bedpost in the captain's cabin, long as the trail of bodies she leaves behind her. She does what she wants, goes where she wants, learns from blisters on her hands and freckles on her shoulders and from nights spent alone – or not – as she chooses.

She chooses, and her life is a story she tells herself, changing the twists at whim.

When she fucks on the deck of her ship, a wooden barrel under her ass and a tongue between her legs, she's the queen of the eastern sea. A set of sturdy shoulders over which to throw her thighs is throne enough, and the salt-heavy wind at her back is the only mantle she needs. Fierce and utterly without fear, she takes what she wants, the taste of sex in her mouth and freedom on her tongue. Sex and money and no regrets.

When she fucks in a brothel she is an adventurous connoisseur discovering all the flavors, tasting everything more than once. Half-clad whores with breasts spilling out over Orlesian knock-off corsets giving handies in the hallways and pert-bottomed young men dandled on laps, plied like greedy children with gifts from lands beyond less expensive than they all pretend, she tries them all, samples them like bored rich women in fabulous hats sample candies in a shop, fingers sticky, hungry for more.

When she fucks herself out of trouble, she is a skillful gambler, deftly crossing out the chancy language of failure and replacing it with cunning success. She's a bettor with loaded dice, rolling seven after seven after seven because what is life without danger, without _risk._ Fucking, fighting – she wouldn't do either unless she wanted to, and even when they think she's losing she comes out on top.

When she fucks a stranger, she is anything she wants to be. She's a princess in disguise, a fugitive on the run, an assassin looking to be swayed with honeyed promises whispered from lips that quiver, half excitement, half fear. Exacting mistress, patient teacher, fleeting lover, beautiful mistake – she is all of these things.

When she fucks a friend –

No. Isabela doesn't fuck her friends, doesn't have so many of them that she can afford to spend them the same way she spends gold, flinging them out of pockets and into beds willy nilly. Isabela fucks people that she thinks she can _use_ , collects them like she collects cards to cheat with, lined up along the inside of her boot. She becomes a tradesman, procurer, purveyor of a good time with a sweet thing.

When Isabela fucks Hawke, it's for a laugh. She likes the look of her, the dark hair, the light eyes, the farm girl sense of humor and the big scary sword that dangles along one thigh. She's always had a thing for underdogs, scrappy little fighters that don't have much of a chance, and it's a story she keeps telling herself – in the Hanged Man, in the Chantry, in the Deep Roads, and that moment in Hawke's big fancy new mansion where she thinks _just this once, just to see what it's like_ and lets Hawke carry her up the stairs. Lets her spread her out across the red blankets of a big sturdy bed, and –

The things she tells herself aren't always true. She doesn't always win. Sometimes it still hurts. Sometimes she's not as careless a person as she thinks she is, and as she turns around on the road to Ostwick and heads back toward the last place she thinks she ever wants to be, she realizes she's going to have to come up with something new to tell herself, some story that absolves this sense of unshakable culpability.

 _This is Hawke's problem, this is Hawke's influence, this is_ Hawke _–_

Because no matter what tale she tells herself on the road between now and then, this isn't a story she's ready to see end.


End file.
